LONDON — Arsenal manager Unai Emery is “100%” confident Mesut Ozil and Sead Kolasinac are mentally ready to play against Burnley in the English Premiership football today.
The pair were left out of the Gunners’ season-opening win over Newcastle because of “further security fears” after being involved in a carjacking attempt by an armed gang in July.
Midfielder Ozil and left-back Kolasinac have now returned to training.
“It’s good news for us because they can help us in matches,” Emery said.
“My focus is to be positive and focus on making sure the players are 100% in their minds here.
“I want to help them to be with us, back to normal training, thinking about football. Above all, I want them to be able to focus on each training session and each match.
“They came back to training with us on Tuesday. I think each session gives us good information and good different options with them also to take the decision if they’re going to be with us on Saturday or be in the first XI. But we are going to wait until tomorrow, our last training session.”
Asked if he was pleased that Ozil (30) and 25-year-old Kolasinac were now back training Emery added: “Am I pleased that they’re back? Of course. For us, for me, first they’re a person and second they’re a player.”
Ferhat Ercan, of Highgate, and Salaman Ekinci, of Tottenham, were arrested on August 8 outside the north London home of Ozil, and have since been charged with a public order offence.
The pair, both 27, are due to appear at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court on September 6.
Police said they were treating the public order offence and the attempted car-jacking as separate incidents.
Meanwhile, Ozil and Kolasinac have been caught up in a ‘gangland turf war’ in north London, according to an expert on gangs.
The pair were the victims of a carjacking in Golders Green on July 25 and have since hired 24-hour security outside their houses to protect themselves. There was a further incident outside Ozil’s house as two men fought with the security guards which led to two arrests last week.
The two Arsenal men were left out of the Gunners’ Premier League opener last week away to Newcastle over “security fears” and gang expert Wensley Clarkson has explained how they have been caught up in an ongoing feud between two gangs in the capital.
“These two footballers have found themselves caught up between two gangs of criminals,” Clarkson told Sky News.
“I believe one of them is old school, Turkish, who’ve been in north London for many, many years and the others are eastern European who’ve swooped into Britain in the last 10 years. Basically it’s a turf war in a sense and the footballers have become their territory.
“And this is a classic example of what’s been happening elsewhere in Britain in the last 10 years. But the difference is the new gangsters are much more, chilling, much more deadly than the old ones. And they don’t care about collateral damage and in a sense these footballers are collateral damage.”
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